The Garden
by Camiara
Summary: After resigning as fuhrer, Bradley and his wife move to a small farm outside of Dublith to escape the madness of the city. Little do they know, it isn't as peaceful as they had hoped.    Commission for SnoringOldMan


Furher Bradley was tired.

He was tired of being the leader of a country. He was tired of being Wrath. He was tired of having the Ultimate Eye. He was tired of being the youngest, most important Homunculus.

He was so tired.

So, when his equally tired wife suggested they move to the Southern Area of the country and start a small farm, he resigned as the country's furher, packed up, and moved down to a small farm a few miles outside of Dublith.

It was a tiny farm, with a petite house, a small shed for wood, a little barn that contained what sounded like a cow, and a relatively large plot of earth, freshly turned, ready for planting.

Melissa Bradley gasped. "It's beautiful!" she said happily. "We should get chickens." She could barely contain her excitement. "And I think we should turn the plot of earth into a flower garden."

Bradley sighed lightly. "Melissa, dear, shouldn't we at least make it practical?" At Melissa's small pout, he sighed again. "What if we do different flowering crops every season? For instance, now, we could plant…" he paused for a moment, then snapped his fingers as a thought came to him. "Zucchini!" Melissa frowned. "Zucchini blossoms are small, beautiful pink flowers." Melissa nodded, a grin spreading across her aging face.

"Alright!" She nodded, grabbed her top-of-the-line leather suitcase, and walked happily into the house, a notable spring in her elderly step. Bradley smiled wearily and started dragging the steamer trunk up the path leading to the cottage.

When The Promised Day had come and the Homunculi had been discovered and destroyed, only Wrath and Pride had been spared. Pride was saved because, when he miserably lost his battle, the clever Fullmetal Alchemist had mercy. His present incarnation had not been permitted to be raised by Bradley and Melissa for obvious reasons.

Wrath, on the other hand, hadn't lost his battle. He had destroyed The Scared Man in a very taxing and epic fight, but that was the only time his skills as a warrior were needed. Wrath survived by cleverness also, but his was a more conniving way. He had used his power and influence to convince everyone that he only did what he did to ensure their safety for as long as possible. Yes, he knew they'd be destroyed eventually, but would they rather die tomorrow, or today? Yes, that's what he had thought, too. So by doing that, he had been saved from a painful demise.

By doing that, he sealed his fate. He would be cursed to live his now mortal life in the enormous country where everyone knew his name, his face, his story. When Melissa suggested that they should move to the countryside, it seemed the only logical cure to his plague of political fame.

Of course, there were still going to be the ever-present people who didn't trust him. There had been people on the train who believed he would someday plan to overthrow Furher Grummand and retake control of the country, and even back in Central, the hotel he had been staying at after he resigned had been egged. Moving into the country, Melissa hoped that things like that wouldn't follow him.

Bradley found his way through the house into their bedroom. The previous owner had left all the furnishings in the house, and all that the Bradleys had packed were personal possessions. Melissa had already begun unpacking her bag, and upon seeing Bradley enter the room, took the steamer trunk and began unpacking it as well. Bradley grinned, pleased to see her so enthusiastic.

"Bradley, dear," she said as she grabbed a handful of shirts to hang up in the wardrobe. "How about you go see what's in the barn?" Bradley nodded, and turned to leave. "Oh," Melissa added quickly. "Later, how about we go into town to see if we can get some seeds for zucchini, and we can buy chickens, and food for dinner…" She continued rambling on like this for some time, and eventually Bradley just smiled genially and said, "Yes, dear, we can do whatever you want," and walked to the barn.

The barn was small, and smelled strongly of hay. Some milking supplies were to the left of the double doors, and a cow stood towards the back, chewing her cud and blearily staring at Bradley. He noticed a chart off to the right, and upon closer inspection, he noticed that it described when to let the cow out and when to feed her, relative to the time of year. Bradley wandered around a bit, just to get a feel to where everything was located in the barn, and then left to go back to the house.

Bradley and Melissa went to Dublith an hour of so later and got zucchini seeds, a chicken and feed, and enough food for themselves to last a week. Bradley tried to ignore the whispers that followed him, the pointing fingers, and the stifled gasps of anger or annoyance.

It wasn't the names they called him that bothered him, it was the fact that they said things like "A fake human can't love." They didn't know his story. They didn't know that he had once been human. They didn't know the sweet love story that had played out between Melissa and Bradley in their youth. It was their ignorance that bothered him, and the only thing that kept him from lashing out at them as the Wrath inside him wanted to was Melissa's warm body beside him, and her small hands clutching his arm.

Melissa had been with him through everything. When they had met, it was three weeks to the day after Father had told Wrath that he needed a Mrs. Bradley. When he saw her, she was nothing but an insignificant human who would be his partner. She had been nothing special. As was normal, he took her out on dates and the like, and, to his surprise, found himself, a Homunculus, falling in love with her. Melissa Hamson, the seventh woman that had been unknowingly selected as a candidate for Mrs. Bradley, had captured the heart of Wrath with her beauty, innocence, and child-like independence.

Forty-something years later, when The Promised Day had come, and it had been announced to her that Selim and Bradley were both artificial humans, many emotions had flown through her mind. After the battle was over and she was allowed to see Bradley again, she confronted him. She asked him whether the forty years that she had spent with him had been a waste, with fake love. In the time she had spent with him, she had never seen him more truthful than she had when he said that, no, everything was real. He did love her.

XXX

They went home and got the chicken situated in the barn, which involved her attempting to nest in Melissa's hair, which greatly amused both Bradley and the cow. Melissa then said something about having to make dinner, and hurried back to the farmhouse. After that, Bradley quickly planted the zucchini seeds, and then went inside to help Melissa finish making dinner, which consisted of spinach and scrambled eggs. Just as they were about to get ready for bed, they had a surprise visitor.

"Bradley," Melissa said, looking up from washing the last pan. "Do you hear that?"

Bradley, who had been putting the clean plates away, closed the cupboard silently and listened. He could just barely hear a scratching and whining coming from the porch. He nodded silently, grabbed the pan from her, and walked to the front door. He screamed savagely and threw open the door.

There was a squeal and scuttling, and when Bradley looked down at the porch, he noticed a small black _something _poking over the edge. He walked over to see better, and laughed.

"Melissa," he chuckled, "it's a dog." It was a small dark grey dog, with a torn ear and a limp. Upon seeing Melissa standing in the doorway, it squealed again and ran inside.

"I guess we have a dog!" Melissa laughed quietly. "He'll have to stay, because I can't get him out from under the sofa."

XXX

The next day consisted of milking the cow and collecting the chicken's eggs, tending to the zucchini, and doing general upkeep. Their life continued like this for a few weeks, and soon the zucchini was flowering.

When Melissa saw them the first time, she was not dissatisfied. "You were right," she said quietly. "They're beautiful." She knelt down and sniffed one of them, wrinkling her nose at the strong scent.

Bradley smiled. "The zucchini itself should start growing in a couple weeks."

"Then we can make all kinds of things with it." Melissa stood up and grinned. "Like zucchini bread." Bradley's smile broadened. Zucchini bread was his favorite.

The rest of their day progressed as normal, and they were soon ready to go to bed.

Melissa yawned. "I like it here," she murmured sleepily. "It's quiet, and peaceful. We can live our lives without being interrupted… and we can do things our way…" She rolled over in the bed and buried her head in the pillow.

Bradley smiled. "Goodnight, my dear." He turned down the wick in the kerosene lamp next to him, lay down, and was soon asleep.

The next morning, he woke up an hour before Melissa, as usual, and went to go milk the cow and collect eggs. Everything seemed normal until he left the house. He hadn't noticed the dog's pitter-pattering paws following him as he had walked out the front door, and when he closed it, he noticed something written on the window.

_YOU'RE A FAKE HUMAN. LEAVE HERE BEFORE YOU RUIN OUR LIVES._

Bradley furrowed his brow, but simply dismissed it as something to be expected, and, after he had washed it off, took no more heed to it.

He went about his business as normal for the rest of the day, not telling Melissa of what he had found this morning. The next morning, he found nothing out of the ordinary aside from not seeing the dog again, and this persisted for about a week.

He awoke this morning to find more graffiti in the same spot.

_WE TOLD YOU TO LEAVE._

Bradley sighed, washed it off, and ignored it for the rest of the day. Everything was ordinary and his life progressed as usual, until they were about to go to sleep.

As Melissa crawled underneath the covers, she said suddenly, "Bradley, dear, have you seen the dog today?" A note of fear crept into her voice. "I haven't seen him since last week."

Bradley frowned. "No. No I haven't." He left the bedroom and searched the house for the dog, but to no avail. When he told Melissa, she frowned.

"How about you check outside?" Her voice sounded higher than normal.

Bradley nodded and left the house to find him. He searched their entire property, and didn't find anything until he got to the barn. There, he noticed that the fence that marked the edge of their property looked damaged. He strode over, and discovered what looked like claw marks, showing where the dog had dug his way out. What was strange was, although the dog had been missing for a week, his Ultimate Eye clearly saw that the earth had been freshly dug.

Bradley sighed. It would be easy enough to track the dog with his Ultimate Eye seeing any and all traces of tracks, but it would take time. _It's worth it for Melissa,_ he thought, and set off to find the dog.

Within twenty minutes, he found the dog, or what was left of it. It appeared to have been shredded up fairly recently by a pack of wolves or wild dogs. He frowned profusely, wondering how he was going to explain this to Melissa, when suddenly he smelled smoke. He turned. It was coming on the wind, which was blowing from the east.

His farm was to the east.

Bradley took off back home, fearing the worst. When he was about a mile and a half from the farm, he saw the bright, telltale light. As he got closer, he could make out the burning shapes of his home and the barn, and he could see several dark figures who appeared to be creating the flames.

Bradley screamed in rage, and vaulted over the fence of his property. The men appeared to be using an imperfect form of flame alchemy, and they were just starting to burn the wood shed.

At the sound of Bradley's savage scream, the men turned and saw him. One of the men sneered and walked towards him.

"The Homunculus misses his human doll already?" he called. The other five men laughed.

Bradley threw a powerful punch at the first man's head, noting the satisfying crunch that resounded from his skull before he fell to the earth. He was about to turn on the others, when he was consumed by fire.

"You like this?" one of the other men called. Bradley saw that he and two other men were dressed in the Amestrian military uniform. "It's a combination of Xingese alkahestry and Mustang's flame alchemy." He paused for a moment, pulling a watch out of his pocket and twirling it idly. "It's amazing what you can do when you're a state alchemist who has a knack for decoding research notes…" He laughed, and shoved the pocket watch back into his pants. "Anyway. The alkahestry comes in handy when I wanna blow up stuff that's outta reach." To demonstrate, he threw four wooden sticks on the zucchini garden and drew a simplified form of the flame circle on the earth in a similar arrangement of sticks. The same circle glowed within the sticks in the garden, and Bradley watched the zucchini be burned to ashes.

What happened next, Bradley wasn't sure.

All he knew was that Wrath had taken over, and when he came back to his senses, all the men were dead. As for Bradley, he was close to joining them.

He couldn't see from his non-Ouraboros eye, and horrible burns covered his body. He felt sticks in the back of his left thigh, and the entire left leg was so burnt that you could only tell that it was a leg because it was attached to him. He dragged himself to the ashes of the garden. He lay down in the midst of it, and closed his eyes.

As Wrath's fires burnt out, Bradley remembered everything he had ever done. He remembered his fight to survive before Wrath came into his body. He remembered overcoming the power of Wrath, and living with it, in order to become a Homunculus. He remembered meeting and falling in love with Melissa. He remembered initiating and ending the long and bloody conflict in Ishval. He remembered the day Melissa had announced that she wanted a child, and he remembered "adopting" Selim. He remembered The Promised Day and all the events thereafter, and he remembered the month or so that he had had with Melissa on this farm.

He had lived a good life, and even if he had done bad things, he had been mostly happy, and had someone to love him, and, after all, wasn't that all anyone could ask for?

Bradley sighed and relaxed his body.

Fuhrer Bradley was tired.

Now, it was time to sleep.


End file.
